The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to product treatment and, more particularly, but not exclusively, to method and system for thermal treatment of products, such as, but not limited to, agricultural products.
Various systems for heating or cooling have been devised over the past decades. U.S. Pat. No. 6,672,098 teaching a chiller comprising a vessel for coolant and an endless conveyor having transverse flights. The conveyor passes in a loop from one side to another of the vessel. An arrangement is provided to alter the path of the conveyor so as to shorten and lengthen the loop. In use, when the loop is lengthened articles are tumbled in the coolant, and when the loop is shortened, articles are conveyed out of the vessel.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,522,237 to Wardle teaching a U-shaped immersion freezer having an inlet and an outlet and an immersion zone filled with liquid refrigerant. The product to be frozen is passed into the freezer through the inlet and raised by at least one paddle member to the outlet. The resulting frozen product and some liquid refrigerant is then passed out of the outlet to a conveyor.
Chinese Patent CN103773939 teaching a high-efficiency aging oven, which comprises an oven body whose lower part is provided with a conveying chain, the top part of the oven body is provided with several circular drainage blowers which are opposite to the conveying chain, and the side walls of the oven body are respectively provided with burners and thermocouples. The invention is characterized in that the bottom of the circular drainage blower is equipped with a mounting rack, the bottom of the mounting rack is equipped with a hot air cycle distributor, the hot air cycle distributor comprises a fan housing, and the top of the fan housing is provided with an air inlet, and the air inlet is equipped with an arc shockproof connector, and the top of the arc shockproof connector is welded with a flange, the front and back sidewalls at the bottom of the fan housing are equipped with front and back support plates, and several parallelly arranged angle irons with interval are equipped between support plates, and trapezoid air outlets with wide upper part and narrow lower part are formed between two angle irons.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,793,027 to Matthey disclosing heat treatment of metal articles fed in procession at a suitable speed into and out of a furnace space defined at its base by a liquid seal through which the articles are admitted for heating to the required temperature and for the required time and through which also the articles are subsequently removed in cooled condition, the required atmosphere in the furnace being maintained by vaporization of the liquid constituting the seal and wetting the admitted articles, and such liquid being selected from a range of commercial solvents, paint thinners and the like which are oxygen-free and vaporise in the temperature conditions at which it is required to operate the furnace space. The furnace space is isolated from the atmosphere at its base by the liquid seal and at its upper part by a trap of the selected solvent or like liquid so arranged as, in response to pressure changes occurring in the said space as between high temperature operative and low temperature inoperative conditions in the furnace) to control the escape of vapours of the liquid to the atmosphere or to a condenser for subsequent return of the condensate to the sealing liquid container and the induction of nitrogen or other suitable neutral gas into the furnace space when the same is put out of operation, and also to provide for escape of such gas by displacement by the generated vapors when the space is heated for the annealing or like process.
CN103245216 teaches a closed cooling tower. The tower comprises a tower body, air inlets and an air outlet, the number of the air inlets is two, the air inlets are arranged at two sides of the tower body respectively, the air outlet is arranged at the top of the tower body, a fan is arranged in each of the air inlets, a water distribution system is correspondingly arranged in the tower body, a filler chamber is arranged in the tower body below the water distribution system, a radiating fin is arranged in the filler chamber, a heat exchange coiler assembly is arranged in the tower body below the filler chamber, the heat exchange coiler assembly comprises a liquid supply main tube, a returned liquid main tube and capillary tubes, two ends of the capillary tubes are communicated with the liquid supply main tube and the returned liquid main tube respectively, and the liquid supply main tube and the returned liquid main tube are communicated with the water inlets and the water outlet respectively. According to the invention, the cooling tower has a high cooling efficiency, and the radiating fin arranged in the filler chamber has a trapezoidal corrugated body increases the radiating effect and improves the heat exchange rate, and the heat exchange coiler assembly composed of the liquid supply main tube, the returned liquid main tube and the capillary tubes increases the heat exchange amount and improves the heat exchange performance.
RU2483571 teaches a toroidal apparatus for production of fruit and vegetable chips. The invention relates to food industry. The toroidal apparatus for production of fruit and vegetable chips includes a toroid-shaped sectional body positioned on a slanted surface, sectional working chambers installed in guides so that to enable movement on spherical wheel supports and equipped with buffers attached to the axles, loading and discharge bins, a steam conduit, moisturisers and a drive. The serially interconnected sections are positioned inside the toroid-shaped sectional body, such as: the raw material pre-heating section, a convective drying section, a preliminary hydrothermal treatment (PHTT) section (positioned between the UHF drying sections) and the dry product cooling section the convective drying section is equipped with a recirculation circuit for the heat medium supply, the PHTT section is equipped with moisturisers, a heat exchanger and a circulation pipeline with a pump, the UHF drying sections are connected, via the steam conduit, to the PHTT section for the liquid pre-heating and are equipped with UHF units having magnetrons (positioned inside the section in a successively alternating way), waveguides and antenna radiators. Before the first UHF drying section a trap is installed, the dried product cooling section is separated from the UHF drying section by a protective region having a rectangular cross-section and the guides before the discharge bin are arranged along a helical line so that to enable the sectional working chambers turnover relative to the torus ring cross-section axle without return to the initial position.
JPH02125421 teaches heat treatment apparatus to cope with various manufacturing steps and to improve productivity by manually operating a process control system on the basis of the display content of a gas flowing state display mechanism to process a material to be processed; and JPH02176392 teaches a heat treatment device to prevent bad affection due to the back-diffusion of operating oil.